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Making The Enterprise A Star: The Power Of Video

The following guest post is by Kiran Kamity, founder and CEO of Collaaj, whose app lets enterprise users share and collaborate with data like video, voice and screen recordings. He previously founded RingCube Technologies, a provider of managed virtual workspace acquired by Citirix.

Collaboration has become one of the hottest market segments within the enterprise, so much so that “collaboration” is starting to sound like another industry buzz word. Why have services like Box, Yammer, Huddle, Jive, and Chatter captured so much attention? Long before machines connected us, there were in-person meetings, as most employees worked within a common office complex (or they flew to corporate headquarters on a regular basis). Colleagues walked down the hall instead of sending an e-mail or a text. Within these formal and informal face-to-face interactions, however limited, ideas were exchanged. Collaboration on-the-fly was taking place often without any knowledge of it.

Then we were introduced to the wonders of e-mail and text and our lives changed.

Suddenly those impromptu conversations stopped. Why walk to someone’s cube when you could send a message to find out exactly what you needed to know – nothing more, nothing less? Teams also dispersed, not only to new office spaces on the other side of the country, but they sprung up on the other side of the globe. Live communications became that much more difficult when factoring in a 7+ hour time change.

The same lack of human connection began to take root in our personal lives as well, but when it did, services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Viddy sprung up to enable us to share every tiny detail of our thoughts and experiences the second they happened. Suddenly the Internet became personal again (sometimes too personal).

The enterprise has long been seeking ways to up interpersonal communications in a secure way that doesn’t compromise the all-important brand or break the bank. Hence the rise of ever-essential collaboration tools and services.

While there has been tremendous innovation in the collaboration space, the greatest leap is just around the corner as these players help the enterprise catch up and harness the tools so readily adopted in our personal lives, applying them in novel ways to help us work better, smarter, and more cohesively.

The greatest impetus for change in the enterprise culture of sharing could lie in the new composition of the workplace. Mobile and video savvy Gen Y and Gen Z-ers now account for more than 100 million people in the US alone, and that number is growing rapidly. For these new entrants to the workforce, smartphones, tablets, YouTube and Netflix are a way of life, leading to a dramatic shift in how information is consumed.

Research proves that the average attention span for video is much higher than that for documents. So it doesn’t make sense to continue using outdated methods of disseminating information in the enterprise, where attention to detail and high levels of engagement have become crucial in the battle for progress and innovation. Rich content will soon become an essential piece of what is considered collaboration.

By integrating rich content into collaboration tools, businesses can turn whiteboard sessions into videos that team members across the globe could watch or learn from whenever it’s convenient. After all, not every sales team has the luxury of selling products that require minimal explanation, and installations usually require more than basic documentation. Repeated WebEx or GoToMeetings are not always practical or scalable and add overhead simply by trying to schedule.

In the spirit of truly democratizing content creation, sales reps could also quickly create videos and share them through secure customer or partner access features available through various vendors. Imagine the difference in having someone walk through a couple of slides, annotating them with actual drawings in a video that could be watched (and re-watched) or shared with other decision-makers at their convenience.

The addition of rich content is super powerful in not only easily explaining a concept or developing an idea, but also building that ever-important personal relationship with the customer or partner. Providing this kind of integrated experience is a great way to stay top-of-mind.

Another practical application of rich content in the enterprise would be the creation of a video repository. Sales engineers and technical support could zoom through pilots and implementations, walking customers through various aspects of configuring and setting up a product or service. When customers see something, they are a lot more comfortable and informed, instead of reading long manuals and guides with a series of steps and screenshots. Such a repository would also make it easier to train employees, without having to give a live presentation multiple times.

Solutions are being developed to make this new vision for rich collaboration in the enterprise a reality, making it possible to capture comprehensively for the first time the three things that make collaboration personal– you, your data and your drawings.

To achieve mass proliferation of video and other forms of rich content in the enterprise, businesses need a backend to make them simple to use. Thanks to consumer platforms like YouTube, we know that means a backend that can store and stream these videos. But in the enterprise context, this backend should incorporate access, authorization, simple sharing within the team or company, as well as integration with existing enterprise infrastructures. Solutions of this nature are just around the corner as collaboration services build them internally or partner with emerging vendors.

Referencing Darwin’s ‘Survival of the fittest,’ as our workplace composition continues to evolve over the next few years, the ‘fittest’ would be those that embrace new technologies to create, market, sell, and manage better. And video will be at the forefront of this new level of collaboration. Fast-forward a few years and there is no denying that the percentage of richer data in the enterprise compared to traditional documents is bound to increase. Those who adapt to these changes in communications will not only win customers, and partners but improve their company’s ability to create new products and services and bring them to market with maximum efficiency.

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